Austria has been a leader and guardian of some of the most sublime achievements in the fine artsmusic, the theatre, literature, architecture, medicine, and science. The Austrian culture is a part of the mainstream of German Germanic culture that is shared by Austria, with Germany , and Switzerland. But what has shaped it and dominated it, what has made it essentially Austrian, are the Habsburg empire and the Christian church.

The greatest Middle High German lyric poet, Walther von der Vogelweide, served at the Viennese court in the late 12th century. The great epic of the German Middle Ages, the anonymous Das Nibelungenlied, was written in Austria. The emperor Maximilian I (1459–1519), called “the Last Knight” (der letzte Ritter), reigned 1493–1519) was a poet and a patron of the theatre. The , and the era that began in the reign of Maria Theresa (1740–80) and ended in that of Francis Joseph (1848–1916) was an age of spectacular flourishing in the arts and sciences. During this time an aggregation of genius and talent in often interlocking circles was gathered in Vienna. Moreover, the Habsburg dynasty’s tradition of patronage of the arts has carried over to the modern republic of today.

The church was a powerful influence in on Austrian architecture, drama, and music. The great Romanesque monasteries, the Gothic St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, and the splendours of the quintessentially Austrian Baroque and Rococco Baroque—exemplified by the works of Austrian architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and the Bohemian architects Christoph Dientzenhofer and Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer—and Rococo obviously derive from the church. The Austrian theatre has its origins in late medieval religious drama, and the affinities of the church with Austrian music continue down to modern times.

The era that began in the reign of Maria Theresa (1740–80) and ended in that of Francis Joseph (1848–1916) was an age of spectacular flourishing in the arts and sciences. During this time an aggregation of genius and talent in often interlocking circles was gathered in Vienna.

Despite the fact that Austrian high culture never has been contained by the borders of the country but rather is considered part of the greater cultural realm of the German-speaking world, many Austrians long imagined their country as blissfully isolated and neutral—an “island of the blessed.” In fact, for many years after World War II, Austria promoted the idea of having been the first “victim” of Nazi Germany and, some would say, deliberately avoided confronting the guilt surrounding its participation in the Anschluss (“Union”) with Germany. But by the end of the 20th century, the forces of globalization and international competition, spurred by the opening of the Iron Curtain in 1989 and Austria’s admittance to the EU in 1995, had brought Austria’s imagined perfection into question. The increased immigration of foreigners into the country has caused particular concern among many Austrians, who fear that their carefully tailored social welfare system may be overburdened and their own Austrian identity threatened. Such sentiment has appeared particularly strong in Vienna, where large numbers of immigrants reside.

Daily life and social customs

Most ordinary Austrians may be aware of Austria’s historical contributions to high culture, but in general only members of the educated middle class and the elite circles of society participate in glamorous cultural events like the Salzburg Festival of theatre and music. Ordinary Austrians, particularly those who live in small towns and in the rural valleys of the countryside, pursue a more common—but in no way less typically Austrian—cultural life, with its roots in regional traditions, age-old rituals and customs, and a friendly communal spirit. Membership in local organizations called Vereine plays a great role in this culture. Informal gatherings are commonplace as well, and going out to meet friends in restaurants or cafés is an integral part of everyday life. A surprisingly large number of Austrians play instruments in bands, sing in choirs, or make music in smaller groups at home or with neighbours. Many wear traditional costumes (Trachten), such as full-skirted dirndls or loden coats, every day, and many more wear them on weekends and on festive or special occasions, including weddings and funerals. Although popular music, motion pictures, television, and other elements of popular culture are enjoyed throughout the country, these aspects of traditional Austrian culture remain important, even to the young.

Most Austrians celebrate the major Christian holidays, though many revered Austrian traditions surrounding these holidays are said to have their roots in pre-Christian times. Glöcklerlauf, a festival that takes place the evening before Epiphany (January 6), is celebrated especially in the mountainous regions of Oberösterreich, Steiermark, and Tirol and features activities meant to drive away the evil spirits of winter. During the festival, young men and boys wear loudly clanging bells and carry handmade masks—often extremely large, lighted from within, and decorated with Christian and secular designs—on their heads and shoulders.

The arts

Austria is known for its contributions to music, especially during the Classical and Romantic periods. The major work of outsiders such as Ludwig van Beethoven (from Bonn [Germany]), Johannes Brahms (from Hamburg), and—in part—Richard Strauss (from Munich) is no less associated with Vienna than that of such natives of Austria and the empire as Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler, and Hugo Wolf. Much of the pioneer work in modern music was done by Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton von Webern, who are known collectively as the Second Viennese school. Vienna is also associated with two popular genres of music: the waltz and the operetta. Both forms find a common source in the person of Johann Strauss the Younger, who with his father, Johann the Elder, and his brothers, Josef and Eduard, constituted a virtual musical dynasty in the 19th century. The Viennese operetta, drawing heavily from the Slavic and Magyar Hungarian regions of the empire, reached its apogee about 1900, the prototypical composer being Franz Lehár.

The Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera are Austria’s premier musical institutions. Other groups of note are the Austrian Radio Symphony, the Graz Philharmonic, the Linz Bruckner Orchestra, the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, the Alban Berg Quartet, and the Concertus Musicus. The Vienna Boys Choir, founded by the emperor Maximilian in 1498, still sings at Sunday masses in the chapel of the Hofburg.The theatre has occupied a central position in the cultural life of Austria. The 19th-century Viennese playwrights Johann Nestroy, Franz Grillparzer, and Ferdinand Raimund developed a drama with distinctly Austrian traits. The high citadel of the Austrian theatre is Vienna’s Burgtheater, in which the canon of German classical drama is performed by the leading actors of the German-speaking world. The Theater in der Josefstadt performs contemporary drama and German adaptations of foreign plays. The theatrical stage director Max Reinhardt, the writer Hugo von HoffmannsthalHofmannsthal, and the composer Richard Strauss were instrumental in founding the Salzburg Festival in 1920, combining both theater and music.Coeval movements in literature, art, and architecture in the late 19th century produced distinctly Austrian styles and mannerisms.

Literature in Austria had auspicious beginnings. The great epic of the German Middle Ages, the anonymous Nibelungenlied, was written in Austria. The most renowned Middle High German lyric poet, Walther von der Vogelweide, served at the Viennese court in the late 12th century.

In the late 19th century, distinctly Austrian literary styles and mannerisms emerged. The writer Hermann Bahr was associated with an era of literary impressionism, the expressly Austrian characteristics of which—a heightened self-consciousness and feelings of ambivalence and tentativeness—were coupled with forebodings of being at the end of an overripe civilization. Hugo von HoffmannsthalHofmannsthal, poet, dramatist, essayist, and librettist of six operas by Richard Strauss, and Arthur Schnitzler, whose dramas are thought to epitomize a hothouse Vienna at the turn of the 20th century, have best conveyed these sensibilities. Karl Kraus, whose literary, political, and social criticism and satire contemplated an entire era in his review Die Fackel (1899–1936), focused on the importance of language. Coming from Prague to Vienna, Franz Kafka, with his haunting works of the individual confronted with anonymous, unheeding power, has entered the canon of world literature.

Robert Musil’s unfinished novel Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (1930–43; “The Man Without Qualities”) is said to be a metaphor for Austria itself. The Expressionist poet Georg Trakl wrote elegiacally of decay and death. Franz Werfel, another Expressionist, excelled as a poet, playwright, and novelist. Stefan Zweig, poet, dramatist, and story writer of imaginary and historical characters, was influenced by another Viennese, Sigmund Freud. Also writing in the first half of the 20th century were the Vienna-born philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and innovative novelist Hermann Broch.

The novelist Heimito von Doderer, who took an earlier Austria as his milieu, is a link between the vanished literary world of the pre-Anschluss years and the presentlater 20th century. Among contemporary Austrian writers whose works have completed a number of works that won international attention in the second half of the 20th century; among them are Ilse Aichinger, Ingeborg Bachmann, Thomas Bernhard, and Peter Handke. The Austrian novelist and playwright Elfriede Jelinek won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004.

In painting, a distinctly Viennese school developed in the movement known as the Vienna Secession (referring to its breakaway in 1897 from the academic painters of the Künstlerhaus), which was part of the Jugendstil, as Art Nouveau is known in the German regions. Led by Gustav Klimt, the movement tangentially involved a number of innovative architects, including Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, and Josef Hoffmann, who also helped found a cooperative enterprise for crafts and design called the Wiener Werkstätte (“Vienna Workshop”). Led by Klimt, a later group was formed centring around split from the Secession and held an exhibition known as the “Kunstschau,” from which Kunstschau (“Art Show”); from this group emerged some of the most illustrious modern Austrian painters, including Oskar Kokoschka, Alfred Kubin, and Egon Schiele.

Among contemporary later 20th-century artists, the abstract paintings of Friedensreich Hundertwasser recall the Secession. The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism , led by Albert Paris Gütersloh, leans has leaned toward surrealism. Other groups include the Realities and, since the mid-1980s, the have included Junge Wilde (“Young Wild Ones”), of whom Siegfried Anzinger has won acclaim abroad. In sculpture, which in the interwar years was dominated by Anton Hanak, the preeminent figure since after 1945 has been was Fritz Wotruba.

Clemens Holzmeister, perhaps the best-known modern 20th-century Austrian architect, had considerable influence on modern church design and was responsible for the two major festival theatres in Salzburg. The designs of Adolf Loos, Roland Rainer, Erich Boltenstern, and Carl Auböck have had an impact on housing and office development.

Folk art and folk traditions, supported by provincial governments, have survived in western Austria, especially in Tirol.

Museums and research institutions

The The avant-garde architecture firm Coop Himmelblau and architect Hans Hollein were well known in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Moviemaking in Austria has tended to concentrate on highbrow or controversial themes. The German-language motion picture industry has not been able to keep pace with Hollywood imports, and foreign films and television shows outnumber Austrian or German productions. A number of 20th-century Austrian actors began their careers in Austria and later found success in Hollywood, including Paul Henreid, Oscar Homolka, Hedy Lamarr, and Maximilian Schell. Also born in Austria were the directors Erich von Stroheim and Otto Preminger. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Austrian-born bodybuilder, actor, and politician, is admired for his films and other accomplishments in the United States.

Cultural institutions

The Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera are Austria’s premier musical institutions. Other groups of note have included the Austrian Radio Symphony, the Graz Philharmonic, the Linz Bruckner Orchestra, the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, the Alban Berg Quartet, and the Concertus Musicus. The Vienna Boys’ Choir, founded by the emperor Maximilian I in 1498, still sings at Sunday masses in the chapel of the Hofburg, or Imperial Palace.

The stages of Vienna and Graz are considered among the finest in the German-speaking world and rank with such German-language theatre centres as Berlin, Munich, and Zürich. The high citadel of the Austrian theatre is Vienna’s Burgtheater, in which the canon of German classical drama is performed by the leading actors of the German-speaking world. The Theater in der Josefstadt, also in Vienna, performs contemporary drama and German adaptations of foreign plays. All theatres are publicly subsidized.

The great museums of Austria are gathered in Vienna. Its Kunsthistorisches Museumof Fine Arts, with holdings extending from antiquity through the great German, Italian, and Dutch masters, contains one of the world’s premier collections. The Austrian Gallery in Belvedere Palace exhibits Austrian art from the Middle Ages to the modern era. The Albertina Graphic Art Graphics Collection in Vienna has is one of the world’s finest collections of prints. In the Hofburg, the Collection of Secular and Ecclesiastical Treasures contains jewelry and regalia of the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburgs. Modern collections are found in the Modern Art Museum and the Secession Museum. Collections of scientific, technical, and industrial interest are found in the Natural History Museum, the Austrian Museum of Applied Art, the Ethnological Museum, and the Technical Museum of Industry and Trade in Vienna.Of historical interest are the Post and Telegraph Museum, the Austrian Railway Museum, and the Military History Museum.

The oldest Austrian academic research institution is the Austrian Academy of ScienceSciences, whose traditions date to the end of the Middle Agesearly 18th century. More modern scientific foundations, notably the Körner Foundationand the Renner Foundation, support scientific research and other cultural endeavours; their main support comes from government sources. A federal Ministry ministry of Science science and Research research was established in 1970; it is responsible for university institutions and for the advancement of scientific activities.

The mediaSports and recreation

Austria’s situation in the Alps means that outdoor winter sports are a favourite pastime. Known as the birthplace of downhill skiing, the country is littered with ski areas. Mountain climbing and hiking also are popular, and thousands of well-marked trails crisscross the Alps. Residents of the lowlands enjoy thousands of venues—swimming pools, stadiums, riding arenas, bicycle paths, and other facilities—for a wide range of sports. Eastern Austria’s rivers and lakes attract countless swimmers and boaters in the warmer months and skaters in winter.

Austria has sent teams to every Olympic Games since 1896, except the 1920 Games in Antwerp, Belg. The country hosted the Winter Games in 1964 and 1976, both times in the Alpine city of Innsbruck. At Innsbruck in 1976, a young Austrian skier, Franz Klammer, set a world record for the men’s downhill event. Since Klammer’s time many other Austrian Olympians—among them the skiers Mario Reiter, Petra Kronberger, Günther Mader, Anita Wachter, and Hermann Maier—have continued the country’s tradition of athletic excellence.

Media and publishing

Austria has several major independent newspapers, including three major dailies in Vienna, Neue Kronen-Zeitung, Kurier, and Die Presse. The leading provincial newspaper is Salzburger Nachrichten. Radio Until the turn of the 21st century, radio and television are were the monopoly of the Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF), a state-owned corporation that enjoys political and economic independence. Several private local and regional radio stations have been licensed, although ORF still operates the country’s main radio stations. ORF also operates a number of television channels.